Are you in favour of triple elimination at Nationals?

[Will Sarty]

The point of triple elimination is to offer more pulling for your buck. An incentive to travel, have lots of pulls, in tougher weight classes.

I'm def still for triple over double. For any tourney. We have incorporated triple into our Battle of the Atlantic tourney and the feedback is awesome. Not to mention that people are exhausted from pulling at the end of the day. Which to me, makes it a success

[Eric Roussin]

Triple elimination the entire way through works fine, although it is true that the guy sitting on the A side till the end is in a pretty sweet spot. I've seen guys battle back from the B bracket to win the class multiple times, but not often from the C bracket.

[Jeff Miller]

I had a conversation with Gord about this. He's seen tournaments like that, with C bracket only for bronze, and he said it's very anti-climactic...based on that I'm inclined to go with the standard triple elimination like on the www.printyourbrackets.com website - it seemed fair to me. Andrew pointed out that those brackets have all the byes in the first round, which is opposite the WAF way (although I don't mind this system).

[Andrew Grant]

I would agree that watching a C side only for third place wouldn't be nearly as interesting knowing that none of them could come back and win the whole thing.

But I think a better climax for the tournament is the the A vs B fresh for the final one or two matches rather than having to watch a guy who has already lost twice in the final match.

The guy who has lost twice may be taking on an undefeated puller, who he would have to beat up to three times in a row. This is not a great climax because he would be in no shape at that point to win two or three matches in a row, because he would have had to compete in a few more matches than undefeated puller.

The A side guy is the best puller and the b side guy is the second best puller. I'd like to see those two in the finals, pulling fresh. The guy who lost twice already has no business in the finals and will only complicate and drag out the process. If you've already lost to two different pullers in a class, you don't deserve another chance to win that class.


The only way i see a C side guy coming back to win it is if the two better pullers he lost to, have a long match and tire each other out. This is not fair to the two better pullers. Or if a puller has strategically gone to the C-side to avoid the tougher opponents, forcing them to get tired against each other. Strategic losses are horrible from a spectator or sportsmanship point of view.

[Eric Roussin]

These are good points. So I guess the event could be run down until there is one person left in the A bracket, one person left in the B bracket, and two people left in the C bracket. Then the two in the C bracket face off to determine 3rd and 4th place, and the A and B pullers face off like in a regular double elimination tournament (A side needs one win, B side needs two wins in a row).

[Jeff Miller]

If you've already lost to two different pullers in a class, you don't deserve another chance to win that class.

This is subjective.

The other thing is if you run into 1 phenom, lose, then pull a guy you can beat, but messed up somehow, you still have another chance which is great. This allows you more chances to mess up, which I think is a big part of the allure of triple elimination. This is more toward the spirit of supermatches...you can adjust your technique accordingly if you have the ability to do so. Double elimination is wrongfully harsh at times and won't reveal the best as easily.

The only way i see a C side guy coming back to win it is if the two better pullers he lost to, have a long match and tire each other out. This is not fair to the two better pullers

This is possible, but on the flip side, tough sh*t for the "better" pullers. And it's not the ONLY way this can play out. The "better" puller could be on the C-side.

[Jeff Miller]

Yes the lay-down strategy sucks for spectators, but I think for the most part Neil Pickup and other blow this out of proportion (edit - for our purposes anyways - Nemiroff is another matter!) I think you'll see lots of good matches. The lay-down stuff has happened for years in double elim tournaments, but usually only the best armwrestlers had the confidence to drop to the B-side to wipe out the lesser pullers. Maybe this gets more prevalent with triple elim, but whatever - same-day tournament style pulling will never be perfect regardless the format. Supermatch pulling is the only "perfect" format IMO for determining who's better than who.
Personally, I would never lay down as I enjoy trying my hardest every match, and I'm pretty darn sure someone is going to beat me anyways - so I'll get to see the B or C bracket in due time.

[Jeff Miller]

Also, if everyone really hated lay-downs that much, a rule could be made that says - if you lay down you are disqualified from the remainder of the competition.

[chrisgobby]

"Lay downs" much like the "female orgasm" can easily be discreetly faked (Or so I've heard). There is No way to enforce such a rule. I've heard many pullers complain about 1 teamate laying down to another. Hell I do it all the time. A good way to prevevt this from upsetting you is to get strong enough to beat everyone in the class.

[Jeff Miller]

You fake orgasms all the time Chris?